NEW YORK (AP) -- On
Tuesday, it will be “1984” again in movie theaters across the country.

About 190 art-house
theaters have banded together to show the 1984 big-screen adaptation of
George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece as a pointed comment on the presidency
of Donald Trump, whose “alternative facts” administration has already sent
“1984” back up the bestseller lists.

“It’s what’s in the
air. People want to do something,” says Dylan Skolnick, an organizer of the
event and co-director of the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York.
“This started with a conversation about: ‘We need to do something. Well,
what do we do? We show movies.’ So the obvious answer was: We should show a
movie.”

"1984,” the second
movie version, starring John Hurt and Richard Burton, will play in 175
cities and 44 states, as well as a few internationally in Canada, England
and Sweden. The event has been organized under the name United States of
Cinema; its website lists the participating theaters. April 4th was selected
because that’s when Orwell’s Winston Smith begins his forbidden diary as a
rebellion against his oppressive government.

“It’s just a work
that has a lot of resonance with what’s going on. It hits a lot of crucial
notes,” says Skolnick. “Orwell wrote about and the film talks about the
essential thing of being able to say two plus two equals four, even if the
government says, ‘No, two plus two equals five.’

Cinemas around the
country are increasingly programming with political protest in mind, playing
movies that have newfound resonance for those who disagree with the policies
of the Republican president. In May, some 60 theaters are planning to screen
films from the predominantly Muslim nations targeted by Trump’s proposed
travel ban. That initiative has been dubbed the Seventh Art Stand and billed
as “an act of cinematic solidarity against Islamophobia.”

A Trump effect has
already been partially seen in the recent box-office success of Jordan
Peele’s horror hit “Get Out” and Raoul Peck’s James Baldwin documentary “I
Am Not Your Negro” -- movies that offer straight talk on racial issues that
might be lacking in Washington. On the small screen, Turner Classic Movies
more cheekily programmed Elia Kazan’s “A Face in the Crowd,” with Andy
Griffith as a populist radio personality who rises to political demagogue,
to air on Inauguration Day.

Since first
announcing the Seventh Art Stand two weeks ago, Sheehan says participating
theaters have doubled from 30 to about 60.

The most, she says,
are in Indiana.

Theaters have a
long list of films from which to choose from Iran, Syria, Sudan, Yemen,
Libya and Somalia. Most notable is Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s
Oscar-winning “The Salesman.” The celebrated filmmaker boycotted February’s
Academy Awards, where he won his second Oscar, because of the travel ban.

Abramowitz calls
the movie theater “a safe space now,” where people can experience other
cultures “that are being more threatened now than before.”

“We recognize that
there are far more people that are welcoming in this country than not. And
we wanted to try to create spaces all over the country where people could
recognize this,” says Abramowitz. “We thought maybe this would be a good way
to engage the community rather than sit around and fume.”